Mindful Makes

Anurima Das talks about global brands that are embracing sustainable practices in denim production, illustrating how India can take cues from the same.

- Anurima Das

At this year’s Kingpins exhibition in Amsterdam, ‘One Million Liters’, which has become one of the most prominent initiatives in the global denim industry, was unveiled. This campaign is geared towards showing how changing one part of the production or manufacturing process can ignite change on many other levels.

To raise more and more awareness, the initiative had been opened for participation, inviting users to select the cause for which they wanted to donate the next million litres of water, using the platform www.onemillionliters.com and social media networks such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

INITIATIVE-STARTER

One Million Liters is being spearheaded by Tejidos Royo, a Spanish fabric brand, to save huge volumes of water that would have otherwise been used in denim-dyeing. As per indications, the first contribution of water has been donated to UNICEF for its water and sanitation programmes. Tejidos Royo has a reputation of prioritising its environmental performance, and is working towards its motto of achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) before 2030. In order to succeed with this plan, the brand has also implemented an industry-first foam-dye process, using which they are manufacturing Dry Indigo®, an advanced technology for ‘responsible’ denim production.

As per reports, during denim-production, an extensive amount of water is used—the quantity can be equated with years’ worth of water that is used for drinking. Considering this, DryIndigo® uses zero per cent water in the dyeing process and 89 per cent less chemicals, reduces energy usage by 65 per cent, and completely eliminates waste-water discharge.

On the other hand, Wrangler, the leading global denim-wear label, has also recently introduced denim products that are made with exclusive foam technology.